Hero 115

Ivan Pavlovich Rosly was born into a peasant family. He joined the Red Army as a private in 1924 and enrolled in 1937 in the Frunze Military Academy. His training was interrupted in 1939 by a call to the front in the Soviet-Finnish war, where he helped turn a looming disaster into a victory by breaching the vaunted Mannerheim Line. For this, he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union in 1940 (115 was the number in his medal), He was a skillful and inventive commander and took part in numerous successful operations in WWII, among them the stopping of the German offensive towards the Caucasus oilfields and the final storming of Berlin that culminated in the taking of the Reichstag and the end of the war. For the latter, he was proposed for (but did not obtain) a second Hero of the Soviet Union award. Rosly's achievements seem to have been underestimated; in fact, he is mentioned only once in Marshall Zhukov's memoirs.

Director Vassily Chiginsky and writer Natalia Shumak have chosen to tell Rosly's tale (from his point of view) as a feature film with interpolated documentary footage.. Production values and acting are first rate, the documentary shote well chosen and the result is a very watchable (and short) film. Perhaps a little more about Rosly's life away from the battlefields could have been included.